Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 February 2006 20:07:08
This train of thought has been chuffing gently around my mind for the last few weeks, and I thought I would blog it. The reason? Not sure, really. Perhaps I hope that by getting it down in words it will be less nebulous and possibly of some help. Help to me, at least, and possibly to others, too. Here goes...
From where do I derive my significance? What criteria do I use to answer the question 'Who am I?' Why do I sometimes feel as if all my efforts, and even my mere existence, amount to very little at the very best?
Just some easy questions to get me started!
Well, I am currently in Dorset with my family. Therefore I am sister and daughter, as well as being wife to the hubby who has kindly come with me. In some ways, this is a big part of who I am. This is especially true given the new level of closeness I have developed with my blood relations recently. But it is far from the whole story.
To pick up on the mention of hubby, I am not just wife. As a result of this marriage made in heaven ;-) , I am also daughter-in-law, sister-in-law and auntie. These are all relatively new roles, and their unfamiliarity means that I am still 'growing into them'. They are still part of me, nevertheless.
In addition, I am friend. This is a very tricky one to define at the moment as many of the people who I consider my closest friends are not in the same city as me. Many of them are in Swansea. The immediacy of their friendship, which was always a great comfort to me, is often now interrupted by periods of silence, sometimes long ones. Though this is perfectly natural and understandable, it does blur the edge of how I feel in terms of signficance. Which is interesting...and sometimes disturbing.
So, what of new friends? Well, I was getting on well with many of the people at work (until the incident with the stink bomb, the mug of newts and the vat of glue). Seriously, tho', the real reason that sentence is in the past tense, it that I have now had to move on. A few months' placement is just long enough to feel as thuough you belong, the right length to make it feel strange to leave, but not long enough to feel like your absence will, in the long run, make any real difference.
Church, then? Yes, I am beginning to get to know some lovely people. But not very well, as yet. Beginning to help at the youth club will help, I am sure. At least it will get me doing something constructive and a little different from the norm.
But church should lead me to the true destination of this train of thought...God. Derailments, diversions or simply delays can prevent or slow the arrival though. The thing is, it is only in Christ that I really find out my significance. All the others means, good though they are, can only be supplemental to the necessary relationship with my Lord. The fact that so much of what I have previously considered to be my identity has been stretched so thin, and that I have not really grown into my new skin, means that I have th a pretty strong motivation to look at my significance in terms of what I mean to the Lord. I currently realise that, much as he knows me, I hardly know him at all. I also have a very flawed view of myself, which could really do with his modification and perhaps total renovation!
So, as you can see, the destination of this train of thought is actually the beginning of a new journey. A long, exciting, possibly arduous, certainly challenging journey of discovery.
Care to join me? (I reckon I could do with the company!)